Read the other 34 posts in this thread?
I was mainly thinking of some previous posts by one person in particular.
I don’t dislike the filter collection module. Sure there will be ways to improve it, and great to see discusion here about it.
But I have liked the idea and you can now make better filtering than in previous versions.
How did you do that?.. found it… I like this option.
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I think the functionality is quite good actually. Now I can see that - once I know how to use it.
For some reason - it never occurred to me how these 3 buttons “x, pin, on/off” work together. (and can actually fight with one another). As well as how they control the top bar.
And yes - it is all in the manual
https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.0/en/module-reference/utility-modules/shared/collection-filters/
I was just chasing my tail for a LONG time.
At last - I can say that I appreciate the effort put into this. Took me a while but the end result is good. Considerable improvement in fact.
Big thank you to the developers and the significant patience putting up with users.
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I shall refrain from any view on the design involved.
However, one factor that may alienate and create barriers for use is terminology.
In relation to the discussion here there are two things that ought to be considered in this respect:
A. “filter”: I do believe that for most user that have their first look at dt, “filter” is something you put in front of a lens. If rather meeting “filter” as referring to a (set of) selection criteria, it may possibly be understood, but I posit that for most it is not intuitive. (Neither is the use of “filter” as referring to a processing module …). The manual is in line with what I say her as it states in point 2.5.1 “A collection is a set of images matching a given selection criteria”.
“Filter” has the advantage in UI lay-out in that it is shorter than “selection criteria”, other than that, it ought not be used.
B. “film roll”: Even though I’m so old as to actually have been using film rolls, I have great problems with this term in dt. The foremost attribute of a film roll is to be a fixed longitudinal set/sequence of images. That does not apply to a set of files in a folder which may may have new images injected or existing images removed, as well as their sequence amended. So why use this arcane and misleading term for users who many have no relation to a film roll at all - but are well versed in “folders” and “selection” etc??
Can’t one rather simply use “image set”, “selection”, “(sub-)collection” or anything similar that people may have a chance to understand without referring to the manual?
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I agree with the fill roll portion, but to me it is not even a selection. It is just a group of images that was imported together. I never understood the practicality of it in my workflow. I use folders and the folder structure. If I want to filter (aka query), i filter by date taken or tags (people or locations or events), but never by “images i imported 21jun2022”.
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And we all see from a differing point of view. As an ‘oldie’, steeped in film culture, the term film-roll perfectly suits my vision of the output from a day of shooting.
I then simply tag my images and have almost no use for filter malarkey,
dt worked just fine for me 2 years ago and the must-have needs that a few are requesting, to my mind is simply an unnecessary burden.
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Three things from me:
I found the new star selection mechanism on the top bar confusing. I spent an embarrassing amount of time try to figure out how to cancel a criteria search (just click and drag over the whole thing). The old drop down in 3.8 with the various options was more clear. Spoiler alert: I’m an idiot.
It’s been a long time since linear algebra for me, I was always more into calculus anyway, so it took me a minute to think about that. I agree that the union and intersection symbols probably need to be replaced.
The sidebar collection filters box feels redundant. The top bar is more compact and does the same job. Imagine if you went to DDG or Google and they had two search boxes for some strange reason. I’d pick one or the other and stick with it. I like how the “drilling down” in collections work but I think it needs to be reworked a bit. it’s not immediately obvious what the filter triangle does. It may be as simple as replacing it with a + for “add rule” or “add criteria” or something. Then you can make it a or or is not rule in the dialog box itself.
I’ve also not been a fan of the new import dialog that was added in 3.8 but that’s another complaint thread. 
If you copy your files over before hand in a file manager you’ve got to remember to tag them before hitting the add to library button which gets annoying if you’re importing multiple folders needing different tags. You can’t look at your files in the program and go “OK, this directory is the Grand Canyon trip so it needs these tags” and so on. You’ve got to remember what you’re up to before hand which if you’re neglectful and don’t copy your cards off as often as your should you end up bouncing in and out of the import dialog trying to remember what’s where. The 3.6 method with the files in the browser with the tags below them worked much better for me there.
Edit: I also generally only want to see my tags and metadata input when I’m importing images, eg in the dialog to import them. Having them on the sidebar all the time just takes up screen real estate I’d much rather use for image information or something similar.
Edit 2: I also found a sandwich in the trashcan at the park and there was no mayonnaise on that sandwich. Who does that? Just doesn’t put mayonnaise on their sandwich and leaves it there in the garbage for someone to find?
The development is very nice! I was very much against it (because I couldn’t sort my images and I couldn’t make my shortcuts work) but once you get used to it is SO NICE!
These 2 “star filters” are independent filters
You can use one of them or both or none. Whatever you like. Besides - these pins - you pin what you want on the top bar. If you don’t like it - just unpin it. Not only that - whatever order you have in the collection filter - it will organize it in this way on the top - completely customizable! Not only that - you can have collection filters “sets” or styles and apply them with one click.
Looking back - when I was fighting the UI myself - it was not fun at all - I did not realize that “range rating” is a completely different - independent and complimentary filter to “rating”.
In my opinion - the developer (or developers) have created something way better than we were able to appreciate!
Maybe the only think I would change would be to change the name from “collection filters” to “collection filters / top bar” (something like this). But even if nothing is changed - it is a very nice tool as it is.
If so much functionality was to be done on the top bar alone - it would overwhelm it. Because there can be items that the user wants to sort by and not look at them all the time.
And because I don’t know who’s idea was this - I would like to ask @Pascal_Obry (if it is okay) to say thank you to all the people who worked to create something so flexible.
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Not every body uses folders as organization, some use dates or just a sequen e numbering.
So grouping images in film rolls can be of use, as you usually import related images after a session.
But I agree the term can be confusing. And it forces you to group images that are imported at the same time that is not allways what you want.
Other processor let you import files and put them in folders and control the naming and folder placio g during import, similar to DT.
But then they have collectiins or albums that let hou group images in a hierarchical mode.
During import they let you create a new album or add them to an existing one if you want. It is more flexible.
In DT i find it a bit confusing too, so I do not use too much clasification, I organize by years and month folders and create a new folder for images of every related event or sesion with a descriptive name.
I had never learned how to use the organizationak tools of DT. It is time to begin.
Filter is a term commonly used in quering.
A query returns a set of results, in this case images in a folder or film roll, and then you use the filter to sort and select a subset that meets a criteria.
I see filters as a local selection of results get by a selection or query, as a subselection.
I don’t find the term odd, although filter has other photograpic means. May be it can be named selection criteria instead of filter collection.
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I like the new star range as it easily and flexibly let you select what you want, images with no star, ones with less tha 4 stars or no star, images with 2 to 4 stars (something many programs dont let you do, as the select only images with more tha selected stars), and it is not difficult to use, just drag de mouse to select the range you want. May be the feedback of what you have selected could be more clear, asi it only changes the background slightly, but the concept is good for me.
@lhutton : You have the old star selection method yet, you just have to un pin the new one and oin the old in the filter collectiin tab.
So no complains you have both ways, for me new one is better and more flexible once you learn how it works.
The right filter box is not redundant, it lets you select other filter criteria that are not in the quick filter bar, and select which criteria appear in the filter bar (pinned filters) and make more advance d logical combinations for the selection that are not possible in the filter bar.
Said that, I have to admit that I don’t use star rating too much. I began trying to clasify my photos, tagging them, selecting the bests… it took too much time and I am not discipline enough.
And you need a clear criteria to assign stars and be consistent, which I am not.
So right now I don’t do too much classification or tagging.
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Cool to see this discussion really being “calm” as mentioned in the title. People make experience with the new tool and we can see how to possibly improve it instead of diagnosing a “regression” before gettting used to a tool that might really help many of us.
I was also a bit confused for some days after seeing it, now after re-editing a large number of images in many folders because of various reasons i would say i got used to it pretty fast and appreciate it as being powerful, flexible and yet not overwhelming or distracting from what i want & need.
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I think everything can be said and discussed, but without anger, blaming or insulting.
I partly understand the frustration when a dev is convinced of his reasoning and is not able to convinced others or users (users only see results and have their expectations, don’t see the difficult it can be or problems impose in development).
If you have quite a different goal or vision you always can initiate your own path.
I don’t know if there are problems in its code and problems maintaining that code, as it was suggested.
But for me it is not a regression at all, I appreciate the effor of providing a more advanced selection criteria and much more flexible than it was (and you can still have what you previously had).
What seems true is that it is not a very used feature (complex filtering) but it is something that is good to have and good culling and classfication programs have.
May be it could be taken away from the prominent place it has in the left and put in a dialog box for the times you need it, accessed from some kind of menu as in LR.
It lacks still some filter, you cannot select images from a camera maker or model or from a given lens, it godd be great to be able to select images filtered by any exif, as in other programs, or any metadata (horizontal vertical orientaions, etc).
All that options may clog the space at the left. So may be a dialog box or a special view in the interface to make advanced filtering would be better.
Being able to select quick filtering criterias to add to the filter bar is great for the user (I don’t know how complex is it for devs to maintain that or if that slows down performance and development as was said).
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A few other things, in no particular order…
The initial setup of the top bar is as follows:
The star and color label widgets are not consistent with one another – with the star widget, you “select all” in order to view all images in the collection and remove images from the lighttable view by selecting “less”. With the color label and search widget, you do the opposite (selecting “more” on the widget removes images from the lighttable view).
The module also allows you to set up your top bar in such a way that you really don’t know what it is supposed to be filtering. For example, see the following:
I defy anyone to interpret that (and building the histograms built into the widgets took a couple of seconds when I added them to the module).
In fact what I did was reflected as follows in the collection filters module:
Not only is it not possible to know what fields are reflected in the top bar, you will also note that there is an “or” selection against the exposure filter (which is also not reflected in the top bar).
In the module itself, the ranges shown were all selected by click+drag, with the actual selected start and end values reflected in boxes below the widgets. For the aperture selection, this looks reasonable (because aperture mostly falls into a very fixed range of values). My range of capture dates for this collection spans probably 15 years or more and my click+drag selection has filtered down to the second (this looks bad and with a range this large, could never have been my intention). Similarly, the exposure values are shown with 6 decimal places.
Many of these issues are probably resolvable, some of them perhaps not so easily.
I think the main issue people had with the implementation of this feature was that it was not yet production-ready and I hope I’ve illustrated some of the reasons why this is the case. I should say I’m still willing to be persuaded that this can be improved but so far I’m not convinced that can be, or that it’s necessary to do so, and I would still prefer to have kept the top bar simple and concentrated on evolving the collections module to something better.
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Yes you are right, I think there is margin to improve the readibility of what are you selecting with the filters. You provide there some quirks and misfunctions.
I like being able to filter quickly using the top bar and customize the accesible filters. But a good feedback of what you are selecting is needed.
For the star rating selection, it would help to draw in color the selected stars/items in gold/yellos color for example to make it more clear what range you are selecting.
I the case you are showing, the name of the criteria (creation date or aperture) would be needed.
For selecting range of dates, the bar interface is too small to be able to see what you are selecting in a collection with many years of photos.
Chris, i think breaking the link between the top bar filters and the other filter makes sense. I think the top bar should have just stars, colors and a search field to search tags). I think these are the ones that will get used 90% of the time. The left side module, i think should be called advance filter and have all the ands ors not or whatever. I think the histogram (building) is not that useful.
Edit to add: i think we should also have a Clear all filters button in the top bar. And maybe a last imported.
It seems that the “color label” filter behaves differently depending on the operating system.
If I click on the color labels in Linux, the widget switches between states as documented.
When I click in Windows, after a few times there is no real prediction for me as to how the filter will behave when filtered. The logical indicator never changes and cannot be changed manually, it always shows “U”. If you press a color label three times without the Ctrl key, the icon cycles through the three states. As examples.
Did I miss something or is it a bug?
This is the only thing I might complain about, great work, thank you!
In general: I’m sure there will be some day use cases I’m happy that such fine grading filtering will be support my workflow. And on the other days, I don’t care about the collapsed modul (but still aware and happy it’s there).
I think there are a lot of valid points here.
Currently my top bar is set like this
and I think it covers a lot of my work - 90+%. I absolutely love that I can combine easily stars and color labels with and / or logic, build in search. This helps me a lot.
@paperdigits suggested a hamburger menu (for the top bar) up in the thread. I find it a good suggestion.
I am sure there are things that can be done better. The thing is that every user works in a different way.
complexity wise - I can only imagine that there is so much involved in it. But I do appreciate the added functionality (the screenshot above).
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If you like it as it is by default, you just don’t need to change the pinned filters.
But others may use a filter by date or by lens aperture (many people do not use stars at all, I have never used color tags) and prefer that filters be quickly accessed.